Thrown out of the protection of justice, the natives could find no security but in force; and flying the neighborhood of cities, which they could not approach with safety, they sheltered themselves in their marshes and forests from the insolence of their inhuman masters.

Being treated like wild beasts, they became such; and joining the ardor of revenge to their yet untamed barbarity, they grew every day more intractable and more dangerous.[*] As the English princes deemed the conquest of the dispersed Irish to be more the object of time and patience than the source of military glory, they willingly delegated that office to private adventurers; who, enlisting soldiers at their own charge, reduced provinces of that island, which they converted to their own profit.

Separate jurisdictions and principalities were established by these lordly conquerors: the power of peace and war was assumed: military law was exercised over the Irish whom they subdued, and, by degrees, over the English by whose assistance they conquered; and, after their authority had once taken root, deeming the English institutions less favorable to barbarous dominion, they degenerated into mere Irish, and abandoned the garb, language, manners, and laws of their mother country.[**] By all this imprudent conduct of England, the natives of its dependent state remained still in that abject condition into which the northern and western parts of Europe were sunk, before they received civility and slavery from the refined policy and irresistible bravery of Rome.

Even at the end of the sixteenth century, when every Christian nation was cultivating with ardor every civil art of life, that island, lying in a temperate climate, enjoying a fertile soil, accessible in its situation, possessed of innumerable harbors, was still, notwithstanding these advantages, inhabited by a people whose customs and manners approached nearer those of savages than of barbarians.[***] * Sir J.Davies, p.

102, 103, etc.
** Sir J.Davies, p.